As McDonough walked through the aisles, Blackhawks fans gave him advice on everything imaginable. Put the home games on TV. Bring the games back to WGN-Ch. 9. Bring back Pat Foley. Bring back Bobby Hull. Get some players who can skate.

McDonough listened intently and said “every idea” would be under consideration.

“This is my biggest challenge yet," he told me that night. “But we are going to get there, I do know that."

McDonough met those challenges, made the necessary changes and watched the Blackhawks evolve from one of the worst franchises in sports to a hockey dynasty.

After they won their third Stanley Cup in six years Monday night, I wondered whether the Cubs could have enjoyed the same kind of success had they fought to keep McDonough instead of letting him become the Greg Maddux of executives -- gone for nothing -- while letting Crane Kenney take his place.

Would the Cubs' drought still be at 106 years and counting? Would Wrigley Field have giant video boards and ads everywhere? Would they still be on WGN-AM 720 and on televised games outside the Chicago-area on WGN-Ch. 9? Would they have reconciled with Sammy Sosa and found a common ground with rooftop owners?

Of course we can only speculate on what would’ve happened. McDonough wasn’t in charge of the Cubs long enough to make any grand assumptions, though he did tell me in a 2006 interview he had “no plans for the immediate future on jumbotrons.”

All the action from the United Center in Chicago.

One thing McDonough did say he would change was the cramped interview room at Wrigley Field that Dusty Baker nicknamed “the Dungeon.”

“I think we'd like to do something with that dungeon and get an alternative,” he said. “I don't think it's really representative of the image we're trying to project. The days of the dungeon might be numbered. The presentation can be improved.”

But the Dungeon remains, and pitcher Jake Arietta was even seen working out there during one of Joe Maddon’s recent pre-game press conferences because the nearby workout room was too crowded.

McDonough spent 25 years in the Cubs’ organization, mostly marketing some awful teams and a few special ones (1984, ’89, ’98) by selling fans on the unique beauty of Wrigley Field.

But he spent only one year -- 2007 -- as team president. McDonough replaced Andy MacPhail when MacPhail stepped down on the final day of the 2006 season. He made the World Series his goal and they went from worst to first in his only season.

In an interview at Wrigley Field a few days after taking over, McDonough told me that seeing empty bleacher seats in September should serve as a wake-up call to the Cubs’ organization.

“It did jar me,” he said. “To me, when you see empty seats that are sold, which most of them I think were, it speaks to apathy and indifference that in some ways they might have given up hope, and for whatever reason they chose to do something else. That has to be changed. It will change. We talk about the unique mystique of Wrigley Field and coming to the park, and how it's an event ...

“When you walk in here it's like a Normal Rockwell painting, and you're just consumed with the beauty of the vista of Wrigley Field, everything that is this park. But between the bar being raised in 2003, and we didn't get there, the White Sox winning the World Series, it ratcheted it up even higher, and the expectations of our fan base is high. It should be, and I think it's a good thing, a very good thing.”

McDonough’s departure after the season was shocking, though the writing was probably on the wall when real estate magnate Sam Zell took over the Tribune Co. on opening day in ’07 and the company announced the Cubs would be put up for sale.

When Blackhawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz made McDonough an offer he couldn’t refuse that November, the Cubs wished him well and made no attempt to keep him. McDonough brought Cubs vice-president Jay Blunk to be the Blackhawks executive vice-president, and they went about changing the culture of the organization.

Home games were put on TV. Foley returned to the air. Hull and other Blackhawks greats were hired as "ambassadors." And the Hawks began holding fan conventions to bring back the lost generation of fans.

"I want to let them know they're all welcome back and we want to see them at the United Center because they're a big link to going forward," McDonough told the Tribune. "We [also] need to send an invitation to all these Blackhawks fans. We said it's time to come back, but we need to give you a reason."

Kenney was put in charge of the Cubs' franchise during the Zell era and stayed on when the Ricketts family purchased the team in 2009. He’s been instrumental in the renovation of Wrigley and sometimes played the role of heavy to try and get Ricketts what he wanted from the city.

The Cubs seem to be turning the corner in Year Four of the Theo Epstein era, while the Hawks won their first of the three recent Stanley Cups in 2010, McDonough’s third year on the job.

We’ll never know what would’ve happened if McDonough was able to finish the job he started on the North Side, but at least he helped bring us a dynasty on the West Side to help us get through our long, cold winters.